If you could just bring us up to date on McConnell's absence from Congress and why he's been absent from the Senate and from the public eye for nearly three months now.

Yeah.

So Mitch McConnell has had a lot of health issues.

He's a very important person in Washington, maybe more so in the past than today.

But he had a fall in his house of some sort, and he has had falls over the past few years.

He had polio as a child and is still dealing with the consequences of that.

He's also 84 years old.

And I know you mentioned earlier, you know, the scrutiny is partisan, but is this complicated at all for Republicans? Like, have any of them acknowledged publicly that this extended leave is taking a toll?

And once again, from our own May 2026 podcast, here's Carl Hulse.

The singing senators were destroyed by Jim Jeffers party switch.

I don't think they were ever the same after that.

I remember them singing at the convention.

I play in a very mediocre band, I would say, and they were right up there in mediocrity, but the four of them together could

I've seen the Native

Makers.

Yeah, it wasn't maybe as good as they remember.

But talk about Republicans

... got up in all the other messes that are going on in the Hill.

JD Vance came up to talk to Republicans this week, closed door, reassure them that the war is going great.

Well, they don't really believe that, and it's particularly not going great for them.

You mentioned political liability.

They see this as a real liability, uh, going into November, and, you know, hitting with gas prices, that sort of thing.

But it's also a budgetary issue.

We don't need this kind of drama."

Mm-hmm.

I mean, that's just the way it's working for him.

He doesn't get much done without Trump's influence.

Now, I have sympathy, maybe even pity, for Mike Johnson for the job that he has because with such a narrow margin and some really, really cantankerous members who are...

You know, they're willing to make a big stink and blow things up for a while until Donald Trump calls them, which is what they want.

You know, they want this call from Trump that makes them a power player.

But yeah, I would say Mike Johnson would be in big trouble without Donald Trump.

[laughs]

Do they read the Constitution and realize they actually have power?

They have.

They, Article I is a real thing, right? I th- I think what's happened with the Republicans in this Congress and ceding power to the administration has been a real mistake on a lot of fronts.

Tariffs, right? War powers.

The things that are actually enumerated in the Constitution, right? They're giving away the store.

And once you give away some power, you never get it back.

And, you know, the Republicans might be looking at this and go, "Well, you know, this was President Trump, our guy.

For Hulse, these disruptions underscore how Congress is grappling with age and an increasingly grim political climate.

Carl Hulse, Chief Washington Correspondent of The New York Times and author of Confirmation Bias.

Democrats started filibustering appeals court nominees, uh, which really hadn't been done.

Uh, they managed to block some of those.

That, that changed, uh, things, but the, uh, in 2013, the Republicans were blocking President Obama from getting judges on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, often called the second most influential court in the land.

It's important because it decides, uh, a lot of political and policy fights in Washington.

Republicans were blocking, uh, there were four vacancies on that court.

Republicans were blocking President Obama's nominees.

So what do you think we may lose as a result of turning up the temperature on this politicization of the judicial nominations?

Carl Hulse of the New York Times.

Robert Bork was a person who thought he was much smarter than the Senate Democrats who were trying to block him, and he engaged in a debate with them, and he was someone who was willing to offer his opinions on what's going on with the court, and that turned out to backfire on him, and that's one of the reasons you don't see a lot of nominees now give any kind of opinion, you know, they all try to fall back on the idea, I might have to decide that case sometime, I don't want to say what it's going to do, but Robert Bork fought with them.

York Times.

I had a unique perspective on that whole fight because I happened to be in Florida, in Tallahassee, election night.

I was covering the election from Florida, saw what was going on there, ended up spending the next week there, and then was also at the Supreme Court argument.

I think that this bled over and people forget because what happened with the Bush administration is 9-11 happened and Things took a different turn.

But there was huge bitterness among Democrats following Bush v. Gore.

And in 2001, when Bush took over and started to move to fill up the courts, Democrats thought these should be Gore judges being put on the court.

Yeah, it just felt,

and the incoming speaker had to quit because of an accusation, it just felt like the whole place was coming unglued, right? But the funny thing about this and Trent Lott, Trent Lott and Tom Daschle, they made a deal to handle this in a different way than the house did and they they didn't they knew it was not going to end in removing the president and they wanted to they wanted to save themselves from a lot of uh trouble and so they wanted to work out a way between them uh where they could do this now there were some big moments joe lieberman's uh speech about clinton but the uh You know, it's funny because Rehnquist seems like he kind of enjoyed it.

And John Roberts would not say that about the two impeachments that he has presided over of President Trump.

And I think Lott and Dash later went into business, right? Ah, yes.

They are good friends these days.

However,

that vote got me a very early wake-up call from the executive editor of the New York Times who demanded I write an analysis instantly.

So thank God for C-SPAN, because I watched that moment like 50 times, trying to see it and characterize it.

Tell us about that.

That's right.

Yeah, that's right.

We had a great week last week.

We spent an entire day, dozens of meetings in the House.

Uh, some great work happening there, okay? And, uh, but, you know, one thing that you take from it is you realize there are plenty of representatives that are definitely serious about helping the Social Security reform issue, fixing healthcare, and things like that.

But what you do notice for sure is, uh, a lot of avoidance on the topic, a lot of, uhThis is maybe an issue that is scary to tackle, all right? And when you see that from our, from our representatives and leaders, you know, it does cause some concern.

Mm-hmm

He has mostly stayed on The Hill, and he said he did because it is the best beat in Washington.

Probably ma- it's the best beat in town because you get to wander around.

You can talk to everyone.

People don't have to talk to you, but they generally, uh, will, right? As opposed to trying to get them on the phone, they can blow you off.

These people are big-time politicians, and they usually, unless it's some really bad confrontational thing, they usually will try and talk at least a little bit.

And, you know, White House is very restricted in where you can move around.

The Pentagon used to be really good for this too, and now they've kicked everyone out.

And here is, uh, Hulse on what it was like to publish his exclusive from a South Beach hotel the following morning.

Right

... resounding Democratic victories, bigger than we anticipated and up and down the ballot.

And I think this is being processed in real time by members of Congress, and I think Thomas Massie said something interesting about this.

... start to show, I wonder how much it can't be papered over and people wanna start poking their hole in it and testing it, and it just kinda creates an opening that has to be exploited.

Yeah.

I think it's just the nature of politics, right? There's no strongeremotion and politics and self-preservation for most of these guys, right? They're gonna do what it takes to preserve themselves.

I mean, if they see that Trump is weakening, they're gonna make the moves they think are gonna help themselves.

And it's true.

So how are you thinking about what just happened here tonight?

I think the Democrats are a different party, and part of the reason is just practical.

They have lost the people who were in the states, the red and purple states, that were, in the past, anxious about shutdowns.

They're really worried that they're going to turn off their voters there.

Well, the people in those states-

... that change?

I, I do.

I think that, you know, they've been radicalized in some ways by Trump's actions, and they think that they have to do things that are extraordinary to stop him.